Originalism means not always getting what you want

That is, for Will Baude, one of the major virtues of originalism, which distinguishes it from other interpretive theories. And he says that this is the fundamental disagreement between him and me:

Originalism suggests that somebody other than the interpreter gets to make important policy decisions, even if that other somebody might sometimes choose to delegate back to the interpreter in the end. Hence, there is no guarantee the interpreter will like the answers, though it is also a mistake to assume that the interpreter will hate them.

He has made this argument before, and I’m afraid I disagree. All alternative interpretive methodologies I can think of provide no guarantee that the interpreter will like the answers. This was one of the points that Randy Barnett made in his debate with Sunstein, who was trying to debunk originalism by showing that it would permit racist and sexist laws. Barnett responded that Sunstein’s preferred approach, minimalism, also does not guarantee (for example) that the Supreme Court will order the government to provide welfare to poor people, an outcome that Sunstein presumably would approve of (according to Barnett). Another appealing interpretive methodology–Thayerianism–obviously would give the interpreter no recourse if Congress decided to abolish the national bureaucracy.

Originalism is itself a choice. Proponents of originalism must make arguments on behalf. And this creates a paradoxical problem for its defenders like Will, who says “if you are intellectually honest, signing on to originalism is signing on to a theory of authority where you can’t be guaranteed in advance that you’ll like what you find.” He’s right that originalism won’t get off the ground if it just advances the political preferences of a small group of people. As I said, the same is true for other methods. The question is what does it get us beyond that? And to answer that question, he must show that it is superior to other methods, presumably by advancing institutional values that everyone or nearly everyone shares. In this respect, originalism is no different from other methods.